Thebes

Originally released as:

Day of the Woman.

Writer:

Meir Zarchi.

Director:

Meir Zarchi.

Cast:

Camille Keaton, Richard Pace, Eron Tabor, Anthony Nichols, Gunter Kleemann.

I'm not only a writer, I'm also a spokesperson for the NRA.

In 1974, Meir Zarchi and his eight-year-old daughter were driving to a park when they saw a woman crawl naked out of the bushes. The woman had been raped by two men and Zarchi helped her to the police, where they had the misfortune of running into a singularly unhelpful police officer. It was this episode that inspired Zarchi to write and direct Day of the Woman. As I’ll discuss below, I think Zarchi did the subject matter justice and the film doesn’t really deserve to be labelled “exploitation”, because I don’t think that’s what he had in mind. And in its first release, it wasn’t marketed as exploitation and didn’t create any controversy; Camille Keaton won an award in Spain but it went mostly unnoticed. However, the film was re-released in 1980 as I Spit on Your Graveⁱ and sold on the promise of exploitation nudity and violence. I think it’s this disconnect between the film itself and its marketing context that created much of the critical backlash it experienced.

Day of the Woman stars Camille Keaton (grand-niece of Buster) as Jennifer Hills, a writer from New York City who has rented a cottage in the country-side to finish her first novel. Once there, she befriends the mentally-disabled Matthew (Richard Pace) and meets the gang of young men he hangs around with: ex-marine and gas station attendant Johnny (Eron Tabor) and his two hangers-on, Stanley (Anthony Nichols) and Andy (Gunter Kleemann).

When we first meet Johnny, Stanley, and Andy they just seem to be regular working-class guys; they leer at Jennifer, but there isn’t anything obviously threatening about them. Slowly, however, Zarchi builds up a sense of tension and unease that is finally released in a torrent of graphic violence as the men rape Jennifer several times in an extended, horribly powerful sequence. Leaving her battered and unconscious, they realise they can’t leave her alive and send Matthew back to stab her to death. Matthew can’t go through with it, and Jenny has her chance to exact revenge.

One of my first notes from watching this film, about a scene early in the film of Jennifer bathing naked, is, “Is female nudity inherently exploitative?”ⁱⁱ Well, no, of course it isn’t — to say it is is to vilify women’s bodies — but given the context and content of the film, it’s easy to view any hint of objectification in it with suspicionⁱⁱⁱ. But set in contrast with the later graphic, violent nudity of the rape scenes, the earlier bathing scene starts to make sense. In the rape sequence, the male viewer^iv is made to question his own earlier objectification of Jennifer; because the viewer, ideally, sympathises with her, is on her side, the violence perpetrated against her turns the objectification in on itself. In a sense, it becomes a metaphorical self-abuse; the viewer’s objectifying gaze is turned into violence against the viewer stand-in.

Jennifer Hills combines her two passions: boat-riding and axe-murdering.

Stylistically, the film is workman-like; it is shot simply, and it uses no non-diegetic sound. The only music in the film is some harmonica played by one of the rapists during their assault, a church organ^v, and a record played by Jennifer to drown out the sound of one of her attackers bleeding to death. The rapists providing their own music cue is interesting: it’s like their transforming their actions into fiction even as they’re performing them. They continue this process when Jennifer hunts them down, and they try different variations of the pathetic “it’s her own fault” excuse. Johnny’s line when Jenny makes him undress under gunpoint is also interesting. He says she doesn’t need the gun: “I’ll do it to you voluntarily,” he says, exposing the basic dysfunction in his sexuality: sex to him is something a man does to a woman.

The long rape sequence that is the film’s centre is excruciating; just when you think Jennifer’s safe, the rapists catch her again. It’s disturbing and uncomfortable to watch, and I think that’s exactly what Zarchi was going for: to make us experience the rape, or at least something of it, along with Jennifer, to get us squarely on her side when she starts killing her assailants. By the time she was riding in a boat swinging an axe, I was thinking, “Good for her.” Not something I usually think about murderers.

The minimalism of the mise-en-scène puts the focus on the realism of the violence, but despite this, I don’t think Day of the Woman is about violence as much as it is about what violence does to people, how Jennifer turns the violence inflicted on her against her assailants. This is obvious in the scene where she seduces and kills Matthew: she, like her assailants, uses sex as a weapon, which parallels her actions with the rapists, and is, I think, the most problematic element of the film. That she is forced into the rapists’ mode of action works against a feminist reading of the film. While I still think that the film is essentially feminist, it’s feminism is flawed and simplistic. I don’t think that mirroring your oppressors is empowerment, but neither do I think that the film “meant” to say that. I think it’s more a side-effect of another of the films messages, which is simply: violence begets violence. Which is a slightly trite message, to be sure, but it has added the benefit of being true. And it speaks to the film having depth beyond its apparent exploitation surface.

Rating:

1. In fact, it was, as so many exploitation films, released under several titles, e.g. I Hate Your Guts and the wonderfully descriptive The Rape and Revenge of Jennifer Hill ↩
2. Yes, female nudity sends me reaching for my notebook. Discuss amongst yourselves. ↩
3. It’s odd that I view the blatant, wilful objectification of women in “real” exploitation movies so differently from the possible objectification in a film that I see as potentially feminist. It’s got something to do, I think, with the fact that “real” exploitation is by its nature transgressive, and at a certain point it can become so transgressive that it goes beyond objectification. Maybe that’s just a rationalisation. ↩
4. Yes, I realise the irony of focusing on male viewers in an ostensibly feminist reading. I’m a man and this is what the film made me think about. ↩
5. Which brings to mind Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light, which also had no non-diegetic music. ↩

Tags: 1970s, Anthony Nichols, Camille Keaton, Day of the Woman, Drama, Eron Tabor, Exploitation, Gunter Kleemann, I Spit on Your Grave, Meir Zarchi, Rape, Revenge, Richard Pace, Thriller, Vengeance

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